Macromolecular Physics

Today’s macromolecular physics is an interdisciplinary science that has been extended beyond its traditional essentials to fields as energy materials, biological systems, optics, electronics and nanotechnology. The key for all this possible applications lies on the macromolecular crystals and their particular properties. The book has been divided into three parts. The first one is dedicated to the microscopic structure of crystals, their morphology and defects from which depend on the physical and mechanical properties of macromolecular crystals. The defects of structure induce interesting application of the crystals and open up novel possibilities for defect engineering as unusual catalysts, self-organization of soft matter by defects, memory effects of topological origin and flow control of liquid crystals and colloid motion by defects. As methods to obtain the structure and morphology of the sample, are discussed the electron diffraction spectroscopy and the transition electron microscopy. The second part of the book concerns the discussion of the topics as the primary and secondary nucleation of crystals, their growth, annealing of crystals and solution, and melts crystallization of macromolecules. All these processes are examined in several types of sample presented with more details in the selected articles. Lastly, the third part of the book summarizes the knowledge of the melting of different macromolecular crystals. It is also presented an interesting application of melt-shear organization technique in order to prepare large-area inorganic/organic opal photonic crystal (OPC) and polymer inverse opal photonic crystal (IOPC), which show wide range of potential applications within the fields of optical (bio)sensing platforms, catalysis, display technologies, actuation systems and security materials.